Eric Schichlein

The Dormancy of the Street Railway

Eric Schichlein

At 11:00 am on the eighteenth day of April in the year 1939, a parade of streetcars trundled towards the car barn in downtown Wilmington. 1 They were packed with local dignitaries and the lead trolley was driven by a veteran of the company, W. B. ‘Tuck’ Savage. With this short celebration, nearly half a century of history came to an end.

In 1888, “a system of horse-drawn street cars” arrived in Wilmington courtesy of the Wilmington Street Railway Company (Howell 170). Later that year, Wrightsville Beach was connected to the city for the first time. The Wilmington Sea Coast Railway Company ran locomotives from “Front and Princess streets” in Wilmington via a trestle to “the Hammocks” (Howell 171). 2 At the time of their construction, Wilmington was one of the largest cities in the state, with a population of 20,056 in 1880 (US Census Bureau 467). Wrightsville Beach had yet to even be incorporated; it was merely a small collection of cottages, nowhere near the resort town it would become. Four short years after the horse-drawn streetcars were introduced, they were phased out. In a sign of modernity, the entire trolley system was electrified. Accompanying this, a generating plant was built by the company to power the system and the town.

The man responsible for electrifying the system was Hugh MacRae. He purchased the company from John D. Bellamy with the help of Northern financiers. MacRae, though, was a native Wilmingtonian like Bellamy. His father, Donald MacRae, was a successful local businessman. Primarily, he owned the Wilmington Cotton Mills, but he also had interests in banks, railroads, and real estate in Florida and Western North Carolina. As his father aged, Hugh gained greater control of Donald’s businesses and began shaping them into a burgeoning empire. Upon his father’s death, he assumed total control and began expanding his portfolio through the founding of companies to dabble in his various interests. Through these companies, he exercised a paternalistic influence over entire towns and shaped their future through development projects.

1 A note on vocabulary, street car, street railway, and trolley are all used interchangeably throughout this paper. Essentially, all three terms refer to a wheeled vehicle that travels along tracks inlaid in the streets of the city.

2 The Hammocks was the name, at the time, for Harbor Island, one of the two islands that make up Wrightsville Beach. Harbor Island is located on the Intracoastal side and Wrightsville Beach proper abuts the ocean.

The Consolidated Railways, Light and Power Company, otherwise known as the Consolidated Company, is one such company; it played a significant role in the development and modernization of Wilmington. MacRae formed the company by orchestrating the North Carolina General Assembly to pass a bill ordering the Wilmington Gas Light Company to, “‘consolidate with the Wilmington Street Railway Company or with the Wilmington Seacoast Railroad Company or with both’” (Davis 5). Under his leadership, the Consolidated Company was used as an instrument to develop the Hammocks, a barrier island group owned by the company. This strategy had two prongs: extending the trolley system and encouraging the use of it. Therefore, the company built the first and only trestle across from Harbor Island to Wrightsville Beach proper before continuing southward along the island. Importantly, the only way to access the island was the streetcar system. At the end of the line, construction was begun on the Lumina, one of the defining attractions of the island for decades to come. The Lumina encompassed a “dance hall, … bowling alley, restaurants, and movie theater.” Lighting the exterior were over 1,000 incandescent light bulbs which they claimed: “sailors navigated their ships by” (Eades Our State Magazine). The luminescence of the pavilion exaggerated or not, indicates that it served as a shining advertisement for a future defined by electricity and it was a powerful incentive for the streetcar which monopolized access to the resort. At this point, Wrightsville Beach had only recently incorporated itself in 1898 and had a yearround population of only 22 people (Census Bureau, 1900 Census, 467). From these humble beginnings, the town would go on to become one of the premier resorts in the region, a heritage clear today.

The golden age of the Lumina Pavilion coincided with the golden age of the streetcar system. It survived for barely a decade after the automobile replaced the trolley. In 1940 Tide Water Power, the new name of the Consolidated Railways, Light and Power Company, submitted to the North Carolina Utilities Commission, the regulatory body that oversaw the company, a request for “the abandonment of electric railroad service in and between the city of Wilmington and the town of Wrightsville Beach” (NC Utilities Commission Report 1939-1940). 3 52 years after its inception as a horse drawn street car system and 48 years after

3 In 1940, the commission was renamed the North Carolina Utilities Commission from the North Carolina Corporation Commission.

Figure 1. Tide Water Power Company. Map Showing Suburban Developments Along the Lines of the Tide Water Power Company Connecting Wilmington & Wrightsville Beach. Scale not given. 1911.

the electrification of the system, the street railway in Wilmington, NC had come to an end. Much changed in those 52 years, there were new corporate strategies and new methods of transportation. The streetcar could not survive that duo of change.

Hugh MacRae was a local visionary. He transformed the modest series of businesses his father owned into a veritable empire. Tide Water Power Company is a perfect example; during his tenure, he used the company as a tool to develop Greater Wilmington all the while growing the company into a behemoth. The utility he created in 1902 was not the same utility he left in the 1930’s. At the turn of the century, Consolidated Railways, Light and Power Company was primarily a transit company which happened to have a nascent electric business. The receipts from other businesses, including the electricity division and the gas division were dwarfed by the receipts from the street railway until 1915. Thus, to grow profits the company needed to grow its nascent electricity business while ensuring steady profits in its traditional operations. Throughout the early 1900’s the Consolidated Company went far beyond its roots as a transit company to foster demand for electricity. On a micro scale, this entailed selling complementary goods like appliances and providing services to retrofit properties with electricity. On a grander scale, that meant real estate development and the coöpting of the street railway to tout the benefits of a future power by electricity. This strategy worked, in 1930 receipts from businesses besides the streetcar totaled $1,200,207.68 while receipts from the streetcar totaled a mere $178,749.98 (North Carolina Corporation Commission 1930-1931 Report). Over the last 30 years, the Consolidated Company had used a bold strategy to create the right conditions for a utility company to survive and in the process, had transformed itself into from a transit company into a utility company. As these three decades of metamorphous came to a close, the will to follow through on large, bold projects withered and the transformative transit aspects of the company suffered from declining profits. The largest of the development projects were in Wilmington, which grew by 59 percent from 1900 to 1940. New Hanover County is one of the smallest counties in the state, yet at the time it had plenty of space for Wilmington to expand. The logical direction of expansion for Wilmington was East towards Wrightsville Beach. West was the Cape Fear River and to the North and South infrastructure was lacking. Running to the East, though, was the streetcar line between Wilmington and Wrightsville Beach. Mushrooming off that line, the initial suburbs of Wilmington would be developed.

As it so happens, Tide Water Power Company owned significant tracts of land to the East of the city, as seen in Figure 1. Writing in 1917, Thos. Davis outlines the landholdings of Tide Water Power, which included “Winter Park Heights, … Harbor Island, … Oleander, … and a tract of land conveyed by W.A. Wright” (Legal Opinion Regarding Titles, Rights-of-Way, Franchises, etc). Work had already begun on improving these parcels when Davis enumerated them in 1917. Starting in 1905, Winter Park and Carolina Place were developed as roomier alternatives to the city. However, these nascent suburbs would continue downtown’s orientation towards the streetcar as suggested by the hearty support expressed in a December 13 th , 1906 Wilmington Morning Star article urging the double tracking of the suburban streetcar line. The explosion of subdivisions within the 1945 corporate limits of Wilmington would continue for nearly two decades after the turn of the century. This was marked by double-digit increases, from census to census, in the population of the city and the county. Between 1910 and 1920 Wilmington grew by 22.7%. It was during that decade that further suburbs, beyond Carolina Place and Winter Park Heights, were built.

A prominent example is Audubon, which provides an intimate view of Tide Water Power Company’s attitude toward development. The lots were sold by the company and it had its “own architects draw the plans to suit the tastes of the buyer” (Wilmington Morning Star). The all-pervading role of Tide Water Power Company in the construction of the suburbs illustrates the importance of design to the company. The totality of the company’s control over the development of the suburbs shows how far the company was willing to go to promote its vision of modernity. This notion is further supported in the same article from the Wilmington Morning Star which trumpets the modern amenities like “water, sewage, gas, electric lights, and telephone” these neighborhoods offered.

These advertisements for electricity were expensive, though. If the city sought to expand, any “new lines … [would need] double track [throughout] the greater portion” (Smith Wilmington Morning Star). Those difficulties in expansion are indicated in Figure 1. Outside of the city center, only the Wrightsville Beach line was capable of reaching new suburbs beyond the 1945 corporate limits. If developments were to expand Northward or Southward from that singular line, they would run into the same problem faced by earlier expansionists: a lack of access. As mentioned earlier,

though, the automobile began to effectively compete against the streetcar in the late 1920’s and 1930’s which presented an opportunity for developers. No longer would their developments be constrained by the street railway line. Even as the suburbs were released from bondage to the streetcar, they became dependent upon the automobile. By the 1930’s, not only was the streetcar no longer necessary for transit to the suburbs, it was not even an effective advertisement for electricity. The growth in receipts from Tide Water Power Company’s utility divisions greatly exceeded the growth of the streetcar business. Gradually, the streetcar business began to shrink. The streetcar had accomplished its goal of growing the electricity businesses at the expense of itself.

Tide Water Power Company’s shifting priorities, which would go on to consume MacRae and the streetcar, were aided by the completion of many of the projects begun decades earlier. By the start of the 1920’s, “Carolina Place was almost totally filled, while in Carolina Heights only a few vacant lots remained” (National Register of Historic Places Application for Carolina Heights). Rather than begin anew and repeat the process of building out more suburbs and expanding streetcar access, the company chose to abandon the old method largely due to the costs associated with it.

The streetcar, which had played such a major role in the initial suburbs, grew increasingly insolvent as the 1930’s continued. Starting the decade, the streetcar business alone made a profit of $45,445.75 but that was minor compared to Tide Water Power Company’s electrical generation business which reported a profit of $439,584.88 that same year (NC Corporation Commission Report 1929-1930). It takes until the 1934-1935 report for the obsolescence of the old way to be made clear. By 1935 receipts from the streetcar had hit $103,101.21, barely half of what they had once been while expenses had shot up resulting in a large loss (NC Corporation Commission Report 1934-1935). With finances like that, the old ways were over at Tide Water. No longer would the company go to such expenses to promote its vision of modernity. Now, it was the turn of the automobile companies and the oil and gas companies to present their vision of the future: one defined by filling stations, and wide car filled streets.

The streetcar did not just die from its own success; it was aided by growing competition. It was clear by the 1930’s that the ever growing adoption of automobiles and the Great Fire of 1934 had made the streetcar obsolescent in the eyes of many local leaders.

It was a cold January day in 1934 on Harbor Island. There were few families on the island at the time, as the annual summer tourist season was long over, and the town was quiet. Around noon, that silence was broken by the arrival of the “dread god of fire” (Smith Wilmington Morning Star). As the fire spread, the beleaguered town fought back, forming a bucket brigade and enlisting the help of the Wilmington Fire Department. At the time, as mentioned earlier, the only access to the island was the rail trestle used by the streetcars. As a result, the Wilmington Fire Department, which had fire engines, was unable to aid the town until it had loaded its engines on flatbed railroad cars and transported them across the Intercostal Waterway. Once on the island, the fire engines proved little use as there were no roads on the island, only trolley tracks. The long delay in aid and the dearth of adequate equipment conspired against the town and lead to the loss of nearly a “third of the popular resort” according to Lamont Smith, a Wilmington Morning Star reporter, who flew over the destruction later that day. This significant loss had a silver lining, it was an opportunity for Wrightsville Beach to dramatically transform itself.

Up to this point, Tide Water Power Company had exercised significant control over the island. Its streetcar system operated a monopoly on access to the island, it had once owned Harbor Island, and it was a key real estate developer. Now, the streetcar’s monopoly had failed and the company’s economic development of the island, heralded by the Lumina, was largely in ruins. This allowed the town leaders to assert control and present their vision of modernity: one that builds upon the now common use of electricity and introduces the modern wonder of the day – the automobile.

The opening of a new drawbridge from Harbor Island to Wrightsville Beach is perhaps best indicative of this shift. This notion is further supported by the abandonment of the Trolley lines in 1940. Essentially, the vision of the future the streetcar championed in the early 1900’s was out of fashion.

The building of the drawbridge was a portentous moment not just for Wrightsville Beach but for all of Wilmington. As discussed above, it was another volley in the war over modernity between the streetcar and the automobile. The story of it begins not with the Great Fire in 1934 but rather three decades earlier when cars were still nascent and the street car yet reigned. In 1900 there were 8,000 automobiles registered in the United States 4 (State Motor Vehicle Registration). That was an inconsequential amount considering the population of the United States at the time was 76,932,905 persons 5 and the population of Wilmington was 20,976 people (US Census Bureau 1900). Rather than automobiles, railroads were the primary form of intercity travel and increasingly were adopted as transit within metropolitan areas. Unlike today, the purview of the streetcar extended beyond large cities like New York, to mid-sized cities across the country. Raleigh, Durham, Charlotte, Wilmington, Asheville, among other North Carolina

4 This does not include Alaska and Hawaii, both of which did not join the union until 1959.

5 This number includes Native Americans not taxed, who were counted separately from population in the 1900 Census, but were added back by the author.

cities, all offered streetcar systems at some point or another in the first decades of the twentieth century (NC Corporation Commission 1899-1900 Report). Furthermore, these systems were not trivial but rather were an integral part of the fabric of the city considering the ridership they attained as shown in Table 1. However, as automobile adoption grew the streetcar faced growing competition. Between 1900 and 1940 the number of automobiles increased exponentially while streetcar ridership gradually dwindled, especially in the 1930’s. This compounds the notion the Great Fire of 1934 illustrated: the streetcars were increasingly obsolescent.

Year

1900

1905

1910

1915

1920 1927 8

1930 1935 1940

Number of Registered Automobiles in the US

8,000 77,400 458,377 2,332,446 8,131,522 17,481,001 23,034,753 22,567,827 27,465,826

Number of Street Railway Riders in Wilmington, NC 849,496 7

-------- 2,665,179 4,305,846 ---------

2,167,503 2,076,374 1,268,025 9

Number of Street Railway Riders in Asheville, NC

775,762 2,516,444 3,726,030 5,358,128 6,667,400 5,695,758 5,031,519 -------- 10

Table 1. Automobile Adoption 6 vs Street Railway Riders per 5 Years. United States. Department of Transportation. Federal Highway Administration. State Motor Vehicle Registrations, By Years, 1901-1995. Washington. Web.

Relying solely upon total national registration of vehicles belies the local nature of the issue. The inclusion of the below maps, however, cements the idea established above that by the late 1920’s and the 1930’s the streetcar was considered obsolescent. In particular, attention should be paid to the differences in quantity and quality of the roads between the below fragments of North Carolina Highway Maps. Figure 2 depicts the state highway system in Wilmington in 1916. Shaded white lines are roads improved via asphalt paving while bordered unshaded roads are unimproved roads composed primarily of dirt. Twenty-four years later, the North Carolina State Highway and Public Works Commission created the map in Figure 3. All the roads shown in Figure 3 are improved, while the same five highways in 1916 are unimproved. Beyond the increased quality, the number of roads in the region had increased. Most significantly, one can see

6 Automobile herein refers to public, private, or commercially owned vehicles. This excludes pickups, panel vans, delivery vans, and buses. the drawbridge to Wrightsville Beach. The improved state highway system across the county echoes the implications of the Wrightsville Beach drawbridge on a larger scale. Both the drawbridge and the larger road network are signs of the pervasiveness of the automobile and the decline of the streetcar as a viable substitute good. They were old and out of date in comparison to the seemingly ever more popular automobile.

A system which had defined Wilmington for half a century disappeared on an August day in 1939. It was heralded in the Wilmington Morning Star with the subheading, “parade and dinner mark the passing of an old mode of transit”. Leading the parade was “W.A (Tuck) Savage who operated the first electric trolley car in Wilmington” (Wilmington Morning Star). Following behind were other streetcars loaded with dignitaries. The mentioning of old in the headline highlights the reasons for the demise of the streetcar. It was old, it no longer was beneficial to Tide Water Power Company and it no longer was viewed as the pinnacle of modernity. With its demise, the baton had passed to the automobile, which championed its own vision of the future. The pomp then had a dual purpose: a funeral for the streetcars and a celebration of the modern new buses that would replace the streetcars. Today, buses continue to operate in the city. Just as the streetcars ran for 50 years, so have the buses ran for nearly 70 years. Is it not time then for a change?

Figure 2. North Carolina State Highway Commission. Highway Map of North Carolina Prepared by the North Carolina State Highway Commission for the Five Year Federal Aid Program. 1916. 1:696,960. “North Carolina Maps”. (10-17-16).

Figure 3. C.M. Sawyer. North Carolina Primary Highway System. 1940. 1:823,680. “North Carolina Maps”. (10-17-16).

7 This number does not include the passengers of the Seacoast Railway Company which operated the railway from Wilmington to Wrightsville Beach. 8 No report from the North Carolina Corporation Commission is available which shows data for 1925. Therefore, data from the North Carolina Corporation Commission 1925-1928 Report, with data from 1927, was used. 9 Buses were now operating in conjunction with the street railway at this point. They carried 45,573 people. 10 Buses were now running in Asheville at this point. They carried 3,441,241 people in 1935.

“Building in Wilmington in 1916 and Suburbs During 1916 Totals Million Dollars.” Wilmington Morning Star, 31 Dec. 1916.

Agreement. Tide Water Power Company, City of Wilmington, and the Board of Commissioners of New Hanover County, July 1917.

Bliss, Michelle. “The Great Fire.” Wrightsville Beach Magazine, Mar. 2010.

C . M. Sawyer. North Carolina Primary Highway System. 1940. 1:823,680. “North Carolina Maps”. (10-17-16).

Davis, Thos. W. Legal Opinion Regarding Titles, Rights-of-Way, Franchises, etc. 4 Aug. 1917.

Howell, Andrew J. The Book of Wilmington. 1930.

MacRae, Hugh. “To Messrs. R. C. Cantwell, Jr., W. M. Kenly, Jr., Waddel Waters.” 11 Feb. 1916.

North Carolina State Highway Commission. Highway Map of North Carolina Prepared by the North Carolina State Highway Commission for the Five Year Federal Aid Program. 1916. 1:696,960. “North Carolina Maps”. (10-17-16).

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Oren, Eades. “Lumina Pavilion.” Our State, 30 Apr. 2014.

Smith, Lamont. “Beach Fire from Plan Gives Semblance of Modern Inferno.” Wilmington Morning Star, 29 Jan. 1934.

“Streetcars Will Make Final Run Here Tuesday.” Wilmington Morning Star, 16 Apr. 1939.

Tide Water Power Company. Map Showing Suburban Developments Along the Lines of the Tide Water Power Company Connecting Wilmington & Wrightsville Beach. Scale not given. 1911.

United States. Census Office. 1900 Census. Washington. Census Office. 1901. Print.

United States. Census Office. 1910 Census. Washington. Census Office. 1901. Print.

United States. Census Office. 1920 Census. Washington. Census Office. 1901. Print.

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United States. Census Office. 1940 Census. Washington. Census Office. 1901. Print.

United States. Department of Transportation. Federal Highway Administration. State Motor Vehicle Registrations, By Years, 1901-1995. Washington. Web.